Woloo is a unique tech platform for Loo-Discovery which is developed completely in India.  Being available for both Android and IOS phones. Woloo Curate, Certify and Aggregate Clean & hygienic, existing washrooms at restaurants, salons in major cities across India. Through the app women can locate nearest washrooms that are evaluated and certified by the company. It has leveraged technology along with its prolific business model to ensure hygiene access is available and affordableto everyone.

Woloo is asset-light and has very low Capex/op-ex as it works on the principle of the shared economy. It has its own remote hygiene management system which helps the restaurant owners(host) to manage the washrooms , and withthe help of IOT devices the stink level and the wet floor of the washrooms can be monitored and managed efficiently to gives a clean and hygienic experience to the users.The co-founder & CTO, Supreet Shah shares more about Woloo.

What Was The Idea Behind Woloo’s Inception?

None of us can deny the unending list of issues that women face when they have to use a public loo. We wanted to mitigate this and present a better world for our girls and that led to the ideation of Woloo.

Speaking of some figures and facts, while there are 10,778 toilets are for men, women have only 3,903 toilets in Mumbai. Moreover, not a single is in condition to be used. The safety issues and violence against women are much prevalent. In fact, 48% of all rapes in India occur when women go to defecate in secluded places. Sadly, 23 million girls in India drop out of school annually, because of a lack of menstrual hygiene facilities. Owing to lack of hygiene and sanitation facilities, India is a country with one of the lowest percentages of working women.

We launched Woloo as India’s first and only Loo-Discovery platform; a social tech start-up. We became the Airbnb of restrooms and patented the concept of hygiene certification. While addressing serious problem of Poor hygiene access facility, Growing Women’s Health & Safety issue, and Lack of Women's hygiene Retail, we are committed to empowering 150 million Urban Working women with Hygiene dignity.

Give A Brief On How Are You Executing The Objectives Of Woloo.

Each washroom which is uploaded on the Woloo Platform is ensured to follow a standard protocol of safety, cleanliness, and hygiene, therefore, guaranteeing that women do not have to think twice before walking into a Woloo approved loo. Our hosts are WAH Certified (Woloo Assurance of Hygiene) which is a Global Hygiene Standard certificate for Woloo-Hosts based on safety, hygiene, and accessibility parameters. These washrooms are authorized in association with the Toilet Board Coalition.

Woloo currently has 8000 hosts & plans to onboard 50,000 Hosts (30-40 near each station) within a 2 km vicinity of train stations in 100 cities by the end of this year.

Apart from Local Train Stations, there will be a Woloo-Hosts near Business District/Bus Station/ Tourist Places/Temples/Public Gardens/Beaches/ Market Places.

With the support of Global organizations like UNICEF, IWSH, Toilet Board Coalition, IAPMO & Aqua for All, Woloo holds a Global expansion opportunity.

How Have You Used Your Expertise To Build This Platform?

Leveraging my expertise in IT, I have designed the complete architecture for Woloo App and the backend systems to scale and serve women across India. We have built a location-based service which allows anyone anywhere to locate our certificated loos. Our platform has a period tracker, thirst reminder and educational videos, content, and podcast to help spread awareness about their hygiene, health, and products. Many women-centric products are available at a subsidized price in our e-commerce store. Our IOT-based remote hygiene management system monitor, measure and audit cleanliness and hygiene host washrooms and has several sensors that monitor the odour and cleanliness of floors of washrooms.

“Go bindas Woloo Hai na”

We have geofenced our washrooms and have built capabilities like users being notified about the closest woloo in the vicinity. All of these services are supported by a very robust cloud-based infrastructure to scale Woloo across India and the Global level.

Elaborate On The Journey Of Woloo And Future Plans.

Woloo 1.0 was designed as a brick and motor model with Powder Rooms. India’s first and only by-women for- women Powder-Room was launched in 2019 in Thane(Mumbai). We wanted to make washrooms accessible for every woman in the country and began to research and introspect. That marked the birth of Woloo 2.0 - an app to locate the nearest, hygienic washrooms. Everyone talks about building washrooms but we decided to utilize the existing ones. Restaurants and salons spend a lot to maintain their washrooms but there’s no revenue generated. With our initiative, it’s a win-win situation for all. Currently, we are operating with a subscription model, with the launch of Woloo 3.0 we want to embark on a pay per use model. Also, strengthen the platform into a robust architecture and make it available in vernacular.

Woloo has also established its first franchisee powder room inMarch 2022 in Ghatkopar metro station. The powder room is equipped with hygienic, clean and safe toilets with the facility to change baby diapers ,a café for quick breaks and store to shop women hygienic products, we plan to have these kind of Franchisee powder rooms across India. Our focus area in 2022-23 are in the area of utilizing the Cloud Solutions, automation, and microservices environment to be highly scalable, reliable and available across regions. Our Ecommerce solution will soon be available PAN India and it will serve fasthyperlocal delivery.

We are working on new tech strategies to enable host across India and globe to associate themselves to Woloo without any manual process. Also our major focus is to empower our host with the help of our remote hygiene management system to provide clean and hygienic washrooms for women every time.

Supreet Shah, Co-Founder & Cto, Woloo

Supreet is a Technocrat and a business leader who is creating and implementing solutions that enable women to locate the nearest clean, safe & hygienic washrooms. She comes with several years of experience in the IT industry in managing key accounts in the Retail/finance/ Publishing domain and leading the teams in various technologies. For over 15 years, she worked with MNCs such as Fidelity Investments, MPS Technologies and Infosys before establishing Woloo.